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Spotify doubles paid subscribers, reaches $8bn valuation

Spotify has announced it has a jump on Apple's new music streaming service to the tune of 20 million paying subscribers, and 75 million members overall.

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Spotify

The streaming service -- which is rumoured, though not confirmed to be closing on a massive new funding round -- said that it has paid more than $3bn in royalties to artists so far. It specified with the help of two relatively simplistic graphs (right) that payouts had grown for both niche and indie artists, as well as mainstream artists.

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The news is timed to poke a hole in the bubble of hype around Apple's entry into the music streaming space. Its refresh of the Beats service, known as Apple Music, was launched at WWDC on Monday with a focus on its larger library, "backstage" access to artists, a 24 hour streaming radio station and a three month free trial.

But Spotify has countered by announcing its updated subscriber figures, which show a greater proportion of paying users to overall subscribers compared to its 10 million/40 million split announced in 2014.

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"More people listening on Spotify means more payouts to the creators of the music you love," the company writes in a blog post. "As we grow, the amount of royalties we pay out to artists, songwriters and rights holders continues to climb faster than ever. We have now paid more than $3 billion in royalties, including more than $300 million in the first three months of 2015 alone."

According to The Wall Street Journal Spotify's latest funding round will see it gather more than $500m to fight Apple Music, Tidal and its other streaming competitors, with investors including Baillie Gifford, Landsdowne Partners, Rinkelberg Capital and Canadian hedge funds Senvest Capital and Discovery Capital Management. That would value the company at more than $8bn, which is just 24 times less than the amount of cash Apple has in the bank, according to its latest financial results.